get down, get down

I acknowledge it is selfish, childish and unrealistic to feel this way - but after today, I just want out.

SB

The Writers Club

I arrived early, before the library had even opened. I don't like to be late. I recall that desk quote from weeks ago, which declared that punctuality is "the virtue of the bored" - and it made me angry all over again. I don't have to be bored to want to be punctual, to be respectful of other peoples time, maybe I just don't like rushing around in a fluster! I'm not really so angry about what some asshole inferred about my punctuality, I'm nervous. I don't know who will be there or what I'll have to do. I don't know why I am here.

The lady running the group today, is a grandmotherly figure - 60-something with grey choppy hair and a splash of bright lipstick - she's wearing a warm woollen jumper and one of those odd hybrid neck scarves that makes me wonder, is it for warmth or fashion? She has that crackly but joyful voice of wisdom, she muddles and fusses to herself, but I suspect her disorganisation is not a choice, but purely a way she gets everything in her life done. I deduce she is busy, and important, and probably a writer of fiction in her spare time, between painting landscapes and pottery classes. She's got spunk and I like it.

I survey the group. I missed the first meeting, so I don't know anyones name or 'story'. Some intellectuals, professionals, mums, creative's, wannabes and maybe one or two actuals. There's one other younger woman seated two spaces away - during her choppy reading later on reveals she's dyslexic, well there's always one ('special case' not dyslexic; sometimes I want to be the special one).

The lady across from me has a friendly smile and a name I can't pronounce, but she is warm and kind. She talks with a fellow South African seated next to her - I hear this lady talk about the novel she's almost finished writing, I recall seeing her name in the newspaper bylines - this one means business.

I recognise some local personalities, art-scene identity's and a crazy old woman who uses her walking stick like a bat - I remember her from work, she used to dance around the parallel bars as if they were a merry-go-round. Whenever she opens her mouth, sharp shards of truth come flying out - why oh why did I give her a hard copy of my assignment - she'd likely tear it to shreds in disgust, chew it whole or will it to spontaneously combust with her cold stare. Yikes. She got something like spunk and I don't like it.

I struggle during the in-session writing exercises, three minutes for the first, ten minutes for the next. Most of the attendees seem to slip straight into their ideas, I fumble, tripping over my own hands as if my fingers were not my own.  After the exercises, most people read their work out.  I can't - not yet. It's not up to scratch, I tell myself I need more practise.

I'm lazy I thought to myself - these people work at their craft, write and re-write. Not me - I just expect it to gush out of me like a broken pipe, all greatness and truth. I don't think this is how it really works. Tick tock...clearly not.

During the break, I linger at the table - become involved (by mere locality) in a conversation with the South African ladies. We talk about some of the stories that have come through, what might be involved with the 'critque'.  The ladies turn to my work - they are being pleasant - "read it aloud" they tell me "it helps if you read it aloud, because then you can hear what's wrong". What's so wrong? The kind one tells me she really liked this one particular line, all of two lines, fifteen words. "You should always include something positive in your critique" the other tells me. Right.

Exactly how many creative pursuits can one person have before they appear desperate? I tell myself I just want to be great at one thing, not good at many things.  Truth be known, I want to be great at all things, most, if not all of the time.

While procrastinating in the final ten minute challenge, I mull over the experience.  I realise the group could be good for me, if I let it - if I don't take things so personally and accept that I'm not the worlds greatest anything. Take the lessons where they are given, and hope they pay off. I pull a clean page from beneath and scribble quickly so no-one sees, "oh StrangeBird, quit plucking at your own feathers - you must get yourself some thicker skin"....

SB

before the falter

I always feel like I'm living inside that small window of time - between the falter and the fall. Every moment - an anticipation of my fumbling feet, or the state of recovery afterwards. When does it get right?  When do I get right? When do I break even?

Is my brain wired poorly? Am I incapable of reaching the land beyond this foggy confusion? I hope not.

Last night, lamenting my week away from work, which has now passed - I wanted to cry - but I couldn't.  I couldn't release, I couldn't let myself fall willingly; tears might dry on their own, but they don't change anything. Besides, who is to hear my cries? The people around me who are powerless to change anything for me, unable to fix me?

I booked myself an appointment to see my doctor.  I want to talk about coming off the meds.  I'm scared.  I don't know what will happen.  My lows may become deeper, more intricate caves - maybe I won't find my way out of them so easily? Easily? It's not 'easy' now. A momentary thought passed that perhaps my new found 'bravery' has nothing to do with the pills.  I cannot imagine tiny armies are contained within those shiny maroon capsules.  I have to believe that I have learnt some things, I have to believe I am brave, all on my own.

I remember when I first started taking the medication - I noticed how the pills would rise to the roof of my mouth when I took a gulp of water - little buoys that were going to save me.  It's funny, but I don't notice that so much anymore. Maybe because I'm no longer sinking?

This is the part where I tell you this song reminds me of John. I don't know why - but I hate that this beautiful song has a permanent taint.  I am glad to have left him behind me, but sometimes I can't help wanting to glance in the rear-view mirror - just to see if he's waving at me. I hate him for making me waste myself. For that time, I hate myself, for wasting myself - all on my own.

I fear my inability to cry is because I accept where I am, that I accept there is no fighting my reality.  But, I don't want this to be 'it'. Where do people go to figure this shit out? Is there a whole generation of 'twenty-somethings' wandering the Earth screaming "where did it all go wrong?" I sort of hope there is, at least then I wouldn't feel so alone.

SB

levitation love

I stumbled upon this clever lady today. Her work is so gorgeous - I love that the 'levitations' make the photographs look like dreamscapes, but they also feel completely planted in the real.  I want to fly too. She's sort of my hero now.

SB

fear and loathing

I'm currently working my way through the new Marina and The Diamonds album, 'Electra Heart' and I find her thouroughly fascinating.



I think my life hit a rough patch while I wasn't looking. I've been using distractions - new people, new things to help me forget. When faced with new, I can put up a pretty good facade at first, but it's when people try to get deeper - they hit a wall and I can't let anything in. Like a cardboard box, emptied and painted for children with imagined doors and windows - but there's nothing inside. People will only wrack their knuckles on pretend doors for so long - sooner or later, if their efforts are unmet they will turn and leave.  I want to walk away from myself too, sometimes.

I haven't written much lately.  I think I'm afraid.  I'm trying to apply my thoughts to more organised 'creative endeavours' and am coming up blank. This frustrates me. What if I have said all I have to say? What if there is nothing more? The past has shown me not to push it, it will arrive when it's ready.  But that's not fucking good enough - because the real world has deadlines. Dead. Lines. Fine lines... frown lines.. down times.. good byes.

I don't feel like I have anything of my own. No dreams, no belongings.  I am suffocating amongst other peoples 'things'.

SB

how to be a woman

If ever faced with a situation, in which I needed to refer to myself as a 'woman', I would always mentally stutter on the word - as if it were an untruth. Of course, physically I fit into that category just fine, but emotionally.. mentally - I've never really been sure.  I don't know if it's because I feel 'woman' is a descriptor saved for strong, self assured females; mothers or mature types that have grown into themselves? As for me, I don't feel strong or sure about anything - mostly I'm just trying to keep myself relatively sane and alive on a day to day basis.

So, when I heard about the book by Caitlin Moran, entitled "How to be a Woman" - the category of which it belongs is 'Humour/Feminism' I was intrigued.

where it's at

'Feminism' is another one of those uncomfortable terms for me.  I suppose that's because in my head I thought that feminists are the kind of folk to burn their bras in giant bonfires, yell at men, be generally dissatisfied and kind of argumentative. The sort of women who might cause me to blush with a controversial comment, and challenge me to think - have my own opinions and be bold with them. However, this is all beside the point, because this book is not really like that at all!

In her book, Moran isn't trying to turn us into bitter and twisted man haters - instead it is a humorous look at things from her point of view - littered with truths, life experiences, and the stuff of things to make you think - to make me think.

At its beginning, Moran talks about the logistics of being a woman - she states "..in many ways, there is no crueler or more inappropriate present to give a child than oestrogen and a big pair of tits". Well, she's preaching to the choir here with that one - it was the long hot summer of 1994 that saw me eternally condemned to sports-days in my baggy school jumper. God, that was shitty, and inevitably futile - just as Moran observes "the problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose.  At some point - scarred, and exhausted - you either accept that you must become a woman - that you are a woman - or you die.." (of heat exhaustion perhaps?)

It interests me when she likens the fight of feminism to an analogy of broken windows.  "In the 'Broken Windows' theory, if a single broken window on an empty building is ignored, and not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows.  Eventually, they may break into the building, and light fires, or become squatters." In her mind, perhaps if we don't sweat the small feminist stuff - which in this case, are the broken windows, then women won't have a chance with the big stuff because our whole house is going to be burnt down by squatters! (I promise she explains it far better than I do!)

Later, Moran addresses the question on all our lips: am I a feminist? To which she provides a brief but effective assessment: "Put your hands in your pants. a) Do you have a vagina? and b) Do you want to be in charge of it? If you said 'yes' to both, then congratulations! You're a feminist." Simple really. Yes, and hell yes - for the record. She convinces me further with: "what do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue', by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES?" And then, to cement it all, she later affirms "...it's not as if strident feminists want to take over from men. We're not arguing for the whole world. Just our share."

Other note able quotes that had me giggling in delight, or thinking... or both:

"When did feminism become confused with Buddhism? Why on earth have I, because I'm a woman, got to be nice to everyone?...I don't build in a 20 per cent 'Genital Similarity Regard-Bonus' if I meet someone else wearing a bra.  If someones an arsehole, someones an arsehole - regardless of whether we're both standing in the longer toilet queue..."

"What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be.  Are you a feminist?  Hahaha. Of course you are."

"Because at the moment, I can't help but notice that in a society obsessed with fat - so eager in the appellation, so vocal in its disapproval - the only people who aren't talking about it are the only people whose business it really is."

"Based on my own personal experiences, 100,000 years of male superiority has its origins in the simple basis that men don't get cystitis."

"When we discuss the great tragedies that can possible befall a woman, once we have discounted war and injury, it is the idea of being unloved, and therefore unwanted that we wince over the most. Elizabeth I may have laid the groundworks of the British Empire, but she could never marry - poor, pale, mercury-caked queen." Now this, I relate to, because I am one of those silly women who thinks this way.

On shoes: "Women wear heels because they think they make their legs look thinner..they think that by effectively walking on tip-toes, they're slimming their legs down from  size 14 to a size 10.  But they aren't, of course. There is a precedent for a big fat leg dwindling away to a point - and it's on a pig."

"If I'm going to spend £500 on a pair of designer shoes, it's going to be a pair that I can a) dance to 'Bad Romance' in, and b) will allow me to run away from a murderer, should one suddenly decide to give chase."

On kids: "To be frank, childbirth gives a woman a gigantic set of balls. The high you get as you realise it's all over, and that you didn't actually die, can last the rest of your life. Off their faces with euphoria...new mothers finally tell the in-laws to back off, dye their hair red, get driving lessons, go self-employed, learn to use a drill, experiment with Thai condiments, make cheerful jokes about incontinence, and stop being scared of the dark."

"Every parent has their particular moment where they realised that, since they'd had a child, nothing really fazed them anymore. For me, it was the day that potty-training Lizzie went wrong, and I had to kick a poo, across a falconry display, in a marquee, at Regent's Park Zoo."

"Feminism needs zero tolerance over baby angst. In the 21st century, it can't be about who we might make, and what they might do, any more. It has to be about who we are, and what we're going to do." Well said Caitlin Moran!

On the ugly machine that is gossip magazines: "I've read more about Oprah Winfrey's arse than I have about the rise of China as an economic superpower. I fear this is no exaggeration. Perhaps China is rising as an economic superpower because its women aren't spending all their time reading about Oprah Winfrey's arse."

On how to know: "...in the same way you can tell if some sexism is happening to you by asking the question 'Is this polite, or not?', you can tell whether some misogynistic societal pressure is being exerted on women by calmly enquiring, 'And are the men doing this, as well?'"

On ageing and plastic surgery: "I want a face full of frown lines and weariness and cream-coloured teeth that, frankly, tells stupid and venal people to FUCK OFF... Lines and greyness are nature's way of telling you not to fuck with someone - the equivalent of the yellow and black banding on a wasp..." I really like her theory.

On the reality of not being a princess: "Accepting you're just some perfectly ordinary woman who is going to have to crack on, work hard and be polite in order to get anything done is - once you've got over the crippling disappointment of your thundering ordinariness - incredibly liberating."

"Simply being honest about who we really are is half the battle...there's so much stuff -in every respect - that we can't afford and yet we sighingly resign ourselves to, in order to join in, and feel 'normal'. But, of course, if everyone is, somehow, too anxious to say what their real situation is, then there is a new, communal, median experience which is being kept secret by everyone being too embarrassed to say, 'Don't think I'm a freak, but..."

Upon finishing this clever read - I'm not entirely sure that I'm ready to accept I will never be a princess; I'm not even sure what kind of woman I'm trying to be, but like Caitlin Moran: "what I really want to be, all told, is a human. Just a productive, honest, courteously treated human. One of 'The Guys'. But with really amazing hair." Yep, that about covers it.

SB

stocktake

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung...
May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong...
May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

- Bob Dylan

I think it's very easy to become complacent - as each day blends into the next.  We think about things, only in terms of how they effect us - we assume things are going to be the same - until they aren't anymore.  It's difficult to find safe ground, when you're trying to be mindful of the moment, but also figuring out where to step next.  No one is to know the road map, or the challenges we might meet along the way.  I think sometimes it pays to slow down at the 'give way' signs and just appreciate the people and the things we have in our lives, right now - as if they were a magnificent parade - the theatre of your life. Our shops and warehouses regularly count stock - as if cereal boxes and bottles of soft drink are precious.  Maybe it would serve us well to do a regular stock take of ourselves - to be grateful for what remains on our shelves, remember what has passed through our doors and discover the gems we have collected in our lost and found boxes.

I don't pretend to be saintly - I get pissy and angry at little things, I forget my blessings and get caught up in things that don't matter - but I do hope to devote a little more time to the things that should be celebrated.

Two of the scariest things you'll ever learn about life:
1) There are no guarantees.
2) It's not fair.

SB